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The Yuezhi: Origins, Migration and the Conquest of

Northern Bactria. By Craig G. R. Benjamin. Louvain:
Brepols, 2006. xviii, 245 pp. \$72.00 (paper).

Victor H. Mair

The Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 67 / Issue 03 / August 2008, pp 1081 - 1084
DOI: 10.1017/S0021911808001447, Published online: 23 July 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911808001447

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Victor H. Mair (2008). The Journal of Asian Studies, 67, pp 1081-1084 doi:10.1017/
S0021911808001447

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 Book Reviews—Inner Asia 1081

within the political system, but it has convinced the government of the need to
introduce forms of good governance, which could strengthen the regime’s
claim to legitimacy. Chapter 6, “Interaction Strategies, Collective Action, and
Political Consequences,” explains why certain Internet-based movements in
China, such as the Falun Gong (pp. 142–44) and the China Democracy Party
(pp. 144–47), failed, and how other public protests, such as the widespread criti-
cism of the CCP’s SARS policy (pp. 154–64), increased public awareness and led
to changes in policy. The final chapter, “Information Technology, Transformation
of State-Society Relations, and Political Changes,” provides a summary and expla-
nations for the development of a new relationship between state and society in
China.
Zheng highlights the contradictory features of Internet development in
China: He demonstrates that although the new media, in particular the Internet,
have become essential tools for legitimizing discourses on CCP rule, they have
also led to the empowerment of new social groups and an increase in civic
engagement. He further shows that both state and society in China are profiting
from the fast-growing Internet, thus refuting the argument that only the state or
society can be the winner in a zero-sum game (p. 10). He regards the influence of
the Internet as a form of mutual empowering of state and society, with all the
attendant conflicts and power struggles. That said, Zheng also demonstrates
that although the Internet in China has developed into a powerful tool for
various emerging groups and has led to new forms of governance, a regime
change—as postulated by the West—is unlikely in the near future. Modern infor-
mation technology, together with other developments such as the market
economy, globalization, capitalism and class differentiation, however, can be
forces that create significant dynamics for political changes in the long term
(pp. 186–87).

JENS DAMM
Freie Universität Berlin

INNER ASIA

The Yuezhi: Origins, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria.

By CRAIG G. R. BENJAMIN. Louvain: Brepols, 2006. xviii, 245 pp.
$72.00 (paper).
doi:10.1017/S0021911808001447

Although its production is unprepossessing (looking like nothing more than a

word processing printout), this is an intrinsically important work of scholarship.
1082 The Journal of Asian Studies

The Yuezhi is the first monograph dedicated entirely to a mysterious people of

that name who migrated long distances from the western borders of the
former Han dynasty to Central Asia. During the course of their wanderings,
they had a considerable impact on the history of the regions through which
they passed and especially on the region where they ended up, settling in
Bactria and founding the mighty Kushan Empire.
The book is written from the vantage of a world historian, which means that
the author approaches his subject in a rather different way than would, say,
a Sinologist or a classicist. He does not focus on merely one phase or one
aspect of the Yuezhi but aims to view them as part of a “big picture,” much in
the manner of his mentor, David Christian.
The book is logically divided into five chapters made up of four or five sections,
each of which has several straightforwardly entitled subsections, as well as an intro-
duction and conclusion for each chapter. The chapters cover the following main
topics: “The Origin of the Yuezhi,” “The Yuezhi in the Gansu: 220–162 BCE,”
“Migration of the Yuezhi Stage One: From the Gansu to the Ili Basin,” “Migration
of the Yuezhi Stage Two: From the Ili to the Amu Darya,” and “The Conquest of
Northern Bactria.” The data for these chapters are drawn from a wide variety of
sources, including historical texts (primarily in Greek and Chinese), but also
make extensive use of archeological and numismatic evidence, as well as studies
in physical anthropology, textile research, and other fields.
It is evident that the author has consulted secondary scholarship in English,
Russian, French, German, Italian, and Japanese but not in Mandarin Chinese.
He appears to have closely and critically consulted primary Chinese sources in
their many Western-language translations, but Greek and Latin sources directly.
The author generally relies on only the best secondary literature but occasionally
cites questionable works, such as Laszlo Torday’s Mounted Archers: The Begin-
nings of Central Asian History (Edinburgh: Durham Academic Press, 1997).
Benjamin begins his investigations with a serious examination of the Bronze
Age nomadic migrations that took place in Central Eurasia. For the historical
period, he pays close attention to chronology, giving—as much as possible—a
nearly year-by-year account beginning around 220 BCE, when the Yuezhi
entered the realm of written history, following them through their unsuccessful
battles with the Xiongnu on the northwestern border of China and with the
Wusun in the area of the Ili Valley, and ending about 125 BCE, when the
Yuezhi securely settled in a semisedentary existence as conquerors of northern
Bactria. A major theme running through the latter two chapters of the book is
Zhang Qian’s mission to the Yuezhi, which is divided into five stages that are intri-
cately interwoven with the tracking of the migrations of the Yuezhi.
A perennial problem in dealing with the Yuezhi is the extent to which they are
identical with the Tocharians and the Kushans. The author adopts a basic policy
of conflation, whereas what might be called for is a model of overlapping entities.
Two components that one would expect to find in a work of this nature are
conspicuously missing, namely, there is no index, nor is there a map. The
former would have made it much easier to correlate events occurring at different
times and places with respect to the numerous groups that are mentioned in the
 Book Reviews—Inner Asia 1083

book, while the latter in particular would have been helpful in tracing the peri-
patetic movements of the Yuezhi across vast stretches of territory that will be
unfamiliar to most readers. It is possible that the author originally intended to
include a map and an index, but they were omitted either through an oversight
or because the publisher did not agree to put them in. One thing is certain—the
author did plan to have a list of Chinese place-names with characters at the back
of the book (on p. viii, he explicitly states that one “appears at the end of the
manuscript”), but it simply is not there.
The bibliography is ample, including many valuable references that were pre-
viously unknown to me. It is, however, somewhat behind the times, containing
few items (other than the author’s own) that appeared after 2000. There are
also some conspicuous absences, such as the detailed works of Taishan Yu,
several of which are available in English in Sino-Platonic Papers. A number of
the entries in the bibliography are in error (e.g., M. Gimbutas, “Comments on
Indo-Iranians and Tokharians: A Response to R. Heine-Geldern” is in American
Anthropologist 66 [August 1964]: 893–98, not 65 [1963]: 893–97).
The author subscribes to some idiosyncratic usages. For example, he consist-
ently speaks of “the Gansu,” which should either be just “Gansu” or “the Gansu
Corridor,” although he occasionally uses the two expressions (Gansu and Gansu
Corridor) in close proximity to each other. Certain other minor slipups are found
in his readings of Chinese characters (e.g., Kuaizhuang instead of Guishuang,
Laozhi instead of Lao Zi), and, like many of us, he has problems with spellcheck-
ing software that “wrongs” what is correct (Quingshuihe instead of Qingshuihe on
p. 96, His Yu instead of Hsi Yu on p. 223). A few names in the bibliography are
mishandled (e.g., Mautsai, L. should be Liu, M.; Cheng, T. F. should be Cheng
T. K. or just Cheng T.; and Haddington should be Hadingham). Occasionally
there are anachronistic usages (e.g., Xian should be Chang’an on p. 34).
On the other hand, the author has a remarkable understanding of the nature
of Old Sinitic reconstructions, particularly for a non-Sinologist. For instance,
he refers to the characters as “morphosyllables” (p. 27), a perfectly apt term.
Finally, the author makes some statements that require rather severe qualifica-
tion, such as when he says that jade is “a stone whose only known source was
in the far south-western corner of the Tarim Basin” (p. 35).
The book abruptly ends thus: “The Yuezhi were left to consolidate their pos-
ition north of the Amu Darya, and to exploit the resources of the fertile river
valleys of the region, until perhaps 80 BCE when their circumstances changed
again.” The author tells us most of the convoluted history of the Yuezhi, but by
no means all of it. In the synopsis that begins the volume, the author indicates
that he wishes to undertake a separate study that would follow the Yuezhi
when they later crossed the Amu Darya and settled in Bactria proper. There
they divided into five tribal divisions (yabghu), one of which—led by Kujula Kad-
phises of the Guishuang—succeeded in reuniting the Yuezhi and establishing the
Kushan Empire. The Kushans, of course, have been much better studied (e.g.,
John M. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans [Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1967]; Arthur L. Basham, ed., Papers
on the Date of Kanishka [Leiden: Brill, 1968]; B. Gafurov, et al., Kushan
1084 The Journal of Asian Studies

Studies in the USSR … [Dushanbe, 1968; Calcutta, 1970]), which makes the
present volume all the more valuable as a reliable account of the background
of the Kushans.
Finally, the type is rather faint and small, especially the indented quotations
and footnotes, making persons with even normal vision strain to read it.
Now, having pointed out some small mistakes and relatively insignificant
inadequacies in the volume under review, I wish to close with a ringing endorse-
ment of Benjamin’s work as a major contribution to our understanding of the
history of ancient Central Asia. This is a fairly large work (more than 100,000
words) that draws on materials from many different languages and diverse
fields. Consequently, it is inevitable that there will be some minor missteps.
What is essential to note is that, in matters of substance and argumentation,
Craig Benjamin has done an outstanding job of piecing together a coherent
picture of a people who previously had been known in only a fragmentary fashion.

VICTOR H. MAIR
University of Pennsylvania

Precious Steppe: Mongolian Nomadic Pastoralists in Pursuit of the

Market. By OLE BRUUN. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. x,
249 pp. $64.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).
doi:10.1017/S0021911808001459

Ole Bruun’s ethnography poses the question, how should we understand the
position of postsocialist Mongolian nomadic herders? Because the book is written
for development officers as well as scholars, he also asks, how can foreign nongo-
vernmental organizations (NGOs) help improve the lives of Mongolia’s herders?
Contrary to some Western scholars (e.g., Caroline Humphrey and David Sneath,
The End of Nomadism? [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999]) and
Mongolian politicians, Bruun predicts that Mongolians will continue to engage
in pastoral nomadism partly because it is “a strategy for survival for those
without other means of livelihood” (p. 228).
A cultural anthropologist with more than a decade’s work in Mongolia, Bruun
conducted fieldwork in 1999 in Arkhangai Province, west of Ulaanbaatar. The
result is a captivating description of herding life that lets the reader truly under-
stand what it means to be a Mongolian pastoral nomad. Occasional comparisons
with China, where he had conducted research before he worked in Mongolia,
enrich the writing throughout.
Bruun replaces the image of isolated herders with one of embedded herders
by moving between the household level and the national and international levels.
Chapter 1 sets the ethnographic description in the historical context of Khotont
Sum (rural district) and the nation, providing us with an understanding of the
impact of national events on people’s lives. The ethnographic chapters describe
nomadic life as it evolved from feudal to socialist to postsocialist form. Descrip-
tions range from Bruun’s experience living in a ger (yurt) to nomads’